Rising Sun: A Novel (16 page)

We had started driving down the street when the DHD operator called. “Lieutenant Smith,” she said, “we have a request for Special Services.”

“I’m pretty busy,” I said. “Can the backup take it?”

“Lieutenant Smith, we have patrol officers requesting Special Services for a vee dig in area nineteen.”

She was telling me there was a problem with a visiting dignitary. “I understand,” I said, “but I’ve already rolled out on a case. Give it to the backup.”

“But this is on Sunset Plaza Drive,” she said. “Aren’t you located—”

“Yes,” I said. Now I understood why she was insistent. The call was only a few blocks away. “Okay,” I said. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s a vee dig DUI. Reported in as G-level plus one. Last name is Rowe.”

“Okay,” I said. “We’re going.” I hung up the phone, and turned the car around.

“Interesting,” Connor said. “G-level plus one is American government?”

“Yes,” I said.

“It’s Senator Rowe?”

“Sounds like it,” I said. “Driving under the influence.”

The black Lincoln sedan had come to a stop on the lawn of a house along the steep part of Sunset Plaza Drive. Two black and whites were pulled up at the curb, red lights flashing. Up on the lawn, a half-dozen people were standing beside the Lincoln. A man in his bathrobe, arms folded across his chest. A couple of girls in short glittery sequin dresses, a very handsome blond man about forty in a tuxedo, and a younger man in a blue suit, whom I recognized as the young man who had gotten on the elevator with Senator Rowe earlier.

The patrolmen had the video camera out, shining the bright light on Senator Rowe. He was propping himself up against the front fender of the Lincoln, holding his arm up to cover his face against the light. He was swearing loudly as Connor and I walked up.

The man in the bathrobe came toward us and said, “I want to know who’s going to pay for this.”

“Just a minute, sir.” I kept walking.

“He can’t just ruin my lawn like this. It has to be paid for.”

“Just give me a minute, sir.”

“Scared the hell out of my wife, too, and she has cancer.”

I said, “Sir, please give me a minute, and then I’ll talk to you.”

“Cancer of the
ear
,” he said emphatically. “The
ear.
”

“Yes, sir. All right, sir.” I continued toward the Lincoln, and the bright light.

As I passed the aide, he fell into step beside me and said, “I can explain everything, Detective.” He was about thirty,
with the bland good looks of a congressional staffer. “I’m sure I can resolve everything.”

“Just a minute,” I said. “Let me talk to the senator.”

“The senator’s not feeling well,” the aide said. “He’s very tired.” He stepped in front of me. I just walked around him. He hurried to catch up. “It’s jet lag, that’s the problem. The senator has jet lag.”

“I have to talk to him,” I said, stepping into the bright light. Rowe was still holding up his arm. I said, “Senator Rowe?”

“Turn that fucking thing
off
, for fuck’s sake,” Rowe said. He was heavily intoxicated; his speech so slurred it was difficult to understand him.

“Senator Rowe,” I said, “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to—”

“Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.”

“Senator Rowe,” I said.

“
Turn that fucking camera off.
”

I looked back to the patrolman and signaled to him. He reluctantly turned the camera off. The light went out.

“Jesus
Christ
,” Rowe said, finally dropping his arm. He looked at me with bleary eyes. “What the fuck is going on here.”

I introduced myself.

“Then why don’t you
do
something about this
fucking zoo
,” Rowe said. “I’m just driving to my
fucking hotel.
”

“I understand that, Senator.”

“Don’t know …” He waved his hand, a sloppy gesture. “What the fucking
problem
is around here.”

“Senator, you were driving this car?”

“Fuck. Driving.” He turned away. “Jerry? Explain it to them. Christ’s sake.”

The aide came up immediately. “I’m sorry about all this,” he said smoothly. “The senator isn’t feeling at all well. We just came back from Tokyo yesterday evening. Jet lag. He’s not himself. He’s tired.”

“Who was driving the car?” I said.

“I was,” the aide said. “Absolutely.”

One of the girls giggled.

“No, he wasn’t,” the man in the bathrobe shouted, from the other side of the car. “
He
was driving it. And he couldn’t get out of the car without falling down.”

“Christ, fucking zoo,” Senator Rowe said, rubbing his head.

“Detective,” the aide said, “I was driving the car and these two women here will testify that I was.” He gestured to the girls in party dresses. Giving them a look.

“That’s a goddamn lie,” the man in the bathrobe said.

“No, that’s correct,” the handsome man in the tuxedo said, speaking for the first time. He had a suntan and a relaxed manner, like he was used to having his orders obeyed. Probably a Wall Street guy. He didn’t introduce himself.

“I was driving the car,” the aide said.

“All gone to shit,” Rowe muttered. “Want to go to my hotel.”

“Was anyone hurt here?” I said.

“Nobody was hurt,” the aide said. “Everybody is fine.”

I asked the patrolmen behind me, “You got a one-ten to file?” That was the report of property damage for vehicular accident.

“We don’t need to,” a patrolman said to me. “Single car, and the amount doesn’t qualify.” You only had to fill it out if the damage was more than two hundred dollars. “All we got is a five-oh-one. If you want to run with that.”

I didn’t. One of the things you learned about in Special Services was SAR, situational appropriate response. SAR meant that in the case of elected officials and celebrities, you let it go unless somebody was going to press charges. In practice, that meant that you didn’t make an arrest short of a felony.

I said to the aide, “You get the property owner’s name and address, so you can deal with the damage to the lawn.”

“He already got my name and address,” the man in the bathrobe said. “But I want to know what’s going to be
done.
”

“I told him we’d repair any damage,” the aide said. “I assured him we would. He seems to be—”

“Damn it, look: her planting is
ruined.
And she has
cancer
of the
ear.
”

“Just a minute, sir.” I said to the aide, “Who’s going to drive the car now?”

“I am,” the aide said.

“He is,” Senator Rowe said, nodding. “Jerry. Drive the car.”

I said to the aide, “All right. I want you to take a Breathalyzer—”

“Sure, yes—”

“And I want to see your driver’s license.”

“Of course.”

The aide blew into the Breathalyzer and handed me his driver’s license. It was a Texas license. Gerrold D. Hardin, thirty-four years old. Address in Austin, Texas. I wrote down the details, and gave it back.

“All right, Mr. Hardin. I’m going to release the senator into your custody tonight.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant. I appreciate it.”

The man in the bathrobe said, “You’re going to
let him go
?”

“Just a minute, sir.” I said to Hardin, “I want you to give this man your business card, and stay in contact with him. I expect the damage to his yard to be resolved to his satisfaction.”

“Absolutely. Of course. Yes.” Hardin reached into his pocket for a card. He brought out something white in his hand, like a handkerchief. He stuffed it hastily back in his pocket, and then walked over to give his card to the man in the bathrobe.

“You’re going to have to replace all her begonias.”

“Fine, sir,” Hardin said.

“
All
of ’em.”

“Yes. That’s fine, sir.”

Senator Rowe pushed off the front fender, standing unsteadily in the night. “Fucking begonias,” he said. “Christ, what a fucking night this is. You got a wife?”

“No,” I said.

“I do,” Rowe said. “Fucking begonias. Fuck.”

“This way, Senator,” Hardin said. He helped Rowe into the passenger seat. The girls climbed into the backseat, on either side of the handsome Wall Street guy. Hardin got behind the wheel and asked Rowe for the keys. I looked away to watch the black and whites as they pulled away from the curb. When I turned back, Hardin rolled down the window and looked at me. “Thank you for this.”

“Drive safely, Mr. Hardin,” I said.

He backed the car off the lawn, driving over a flower bed.

“
And
the irises,” the man in the bathrobe shouted, as the car pulled away down the road. He looked at me. “I’m telling you, the other man was driving, and he was drunk.”

I said, “Here’s my card. If things don’t turn out right, call me.”

He looked at the card, shaking his head, and went back into his house. Connor and I got back into the car. We drove down the hill.

Connor said, “You got information on the aide?”

“Yes,” I said.

“What was in his pocket?”

“I’d say it was a pair of women’s panties.”

“So would I,” Connor said.

Of course there was nothing we could do. Personally, I would have liked to spin the smug bastard around, push him up against the car and search him, right there. But we both knew our hands were tied: we had no probable cause to search Hardin, or to arrest him. He was a young man driving with two young women in the backseat, either of whom might be without her panties, and a drunken United States senator in the front seat. The only sensible thing to do was to let them all go.

But it seemed like an evening of letting people go.

The phone rang. I pushed the speaker button. “Lieutenant Smith.”

“Hey, buddy.” It was Graham. “I’m over here at the morgue, and guess what? I have some Japanese bugging me to attend the autopsy. Wants to sit in and observe, if you can believe that shit. He’s all bent out of shape because we
started the autopsy without him. But the lab work is starting to come back. It is not looking good for Nippon Central. I’d say we have a Japanese perp. So: you coming here or what?”

I looked at Connor. He nodded.

“We’re heading there now,” I said.

The fastest way to the morgue was through the emergency room at County General Hospital. As we went through, a black man covered in blood was sitting up on his gurney, screaming “Kill the pope! Kill the pope! Fuck him!” in a drug-crazed frenzy. A half-dozen attendants were trying to push him down. He had gunshot wounds in his shoulder and hand. The floors and walls of the emergency room were spattered with blood. An orderly went down the hall, cleaning it up with a mop. The hallways were lined with black and Hispanic people. Some of them held children in their laps. Everyone looked away from the bloody mop. From somewhere down the corridor, we heard more screams.

We got onto the elevator. It was quiet.

Connor said, “A homicide every twenty minutes. A rape every seven minutes. A child murdered every four hours. No other country tolerates these levels of violence.”

The doors opened. Compared to the emergency room, the basement corridors of the county morgue were positively tranquil. There was a strong odor of formaldehyde. We went to the desk, where the thin, angular diener, Harry Landon, was bent over some papers, eating a ham sandwich. He didn’t look up. “Hey, guys.”

“Hey, Harry.”

“What you here for? Austin prep?”

“Yeah.”

“They started about half an hour ago. Guess there’s a big rush on her, huh?”

“How’s that?”

“The chief called Dr. Tim out of bed and told him to do it pronto. Pissed him off pretty good. You know how particular Dr. Tim is.” The diener smiled. “And they called in a lot of lab people, too. Who ever heard of pushing a full
workup in the middle of the night? I mean, you know what this is going to cost in overtime?”

I said, “And what about Graham?”

“He’s around here someplace. He had some Japanese guy chasing after him. Dogging him like a shadow. Then every half hour, the Japanese asks me can he use the phone, and he makes a call. Speaks Japanese a while. Then he goes back to bothering Graham. He says he wants to see the autopsy, if you can believe that. Keeps pushing, pushing. But anyway, the Japanese makes his last call about ten minutes ago, and suddenly a big change comes over him. I was here at the desk. I saw it on his face. He goes
mojo mojo
like he can’t believe his ears. And then he
runs
out of here. I mean it:
runs.
”

“And where’s the autopsy?”

“Room two.”

“Thanks, Harry.”

“Close the
door.
”

“Hi, Tim,” I said, as we came into the autopsy room. Tim Yoshimura, known to everyone as Dr. Tim, was leaning over the stainless-steel table. Even though it was one-forty in the morning, he was as usual immaculate. Everything was in place. His hair was neatly combed. His tie was perfectly knotted. The pens were lined up in the pocket of his starched lab coat.

“Did you
hear
me?”

“I’m closing it, Tim.” The door had a pneumatic self-closing mechanism, but apparently that wasn’t fast enough for Dr. Tim.